But really Japan has to seriously put an effort to positively utilize the other half of their able worker pool. If they engaged and got similar participation rates as men, that could go a long way in expanding their economy.
(BTW, the previous HN discussion referenced above is definitely worth referencing if a reader wants a more wide-ranging discussion.)
Making employment easier for women is clearly not related to birth rate. It seems to be inversely correlated with first world living status and education more than anything.
> It seems to be inversely correlated with first world living status and education more than anything.
Well, at least for Germany I can provide some anecdata: either you're on welfare and have the state fund your life including kids or you're rich. The middle class and especially the young (20-30y) population in the major cities simply often cannot afford kids, not with the exploded rents and the trend to unpaid (!) internships, year-limited contracts, "gig work" and other things making my generation's life a living hell. I'm 27 and lucky to have landed an unlimited employment contract. The whole situation reminds me more and more of the setting of Idiocracy, and that without the US president in that movie being obviously inspirational for the current real world one.
In addition the young population that fled the rural areas (due to e.g. job availability, the lack of public transport, any form of Internet faster than ISDN, ...) but left their parents/grandparents behind cannot rely on them to help with bringing up a child, further lowering the birth rate.
For Italy, the situation is even worse - depending on the source and demographic target, up to 70-80% of young people still live with their parents because they cannot afford their own home (https://www.thelocal.it/20161024/two-thirds-of-italian-mille...). Hard enough to... uh, get going with your partner when your parents are next room, much less actually wanting to raise a child.
1. Newer generation's extended adolescence
2. More selfish attitude (selfish with time and more materialistic than previous generations)
3. Lowered sperm count because of WIFI, Cell phones and ingesting large quantities of plastics and other chemicals, both from the goods imported from china and the pollutants in the air soil and water largely also from China.
4. High housing costs which are primarily caused by women now commonly working. A two income household can afford to pay much more for a home than the traditional one. So prices have risen to what people can commonly now afford (a sad affect of women giving up raising their own children, to essentially make nothing monetarily, but achieve a power that commonly splits their family apart from the resulting power struggle combined with the lack of co-dependence which traditionally incentivized parents to work through their problems at home, and consequently grow into better people with a satisfying relationship).
5. Kids used to mean status for women (and for men). Now it means you are a failure because you don't have a college degree and a career (very sad since raising a child to be a great person is actually the most important career that could ever exist. We are seeing the devastating affects in today's kids and young adults when child care programs raise kids).
[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10216510/The-...
Really? I don't recall seeing any hand sewn backpacks in Japan- only commercially manufactured ones- but I wasn't looking that closely- so I am wondering if you have a citation for this interesting bit?
Regarding policy - of course the size of the class should instead be expanded to accommodate all who meet the bar, but unfortunately Japan also has issues with institutional rigidity and artificial licensure restrictions.
Once there is demand for education you can't roll it back by not delivering.
Moreover you can't fix anything by cheating on people and/or making their lives miserable. That's putting oneself in a very bad position indeed.
It sounds more and more of a bad joke. In Russia, you cheat on exams for University, but in Japan, University cheats on exams for you.
I would be interested in seeing the opposite examples where screwing people over fixed their birth rates (and introduced pink unicorns) but I'm pretty confident there will not be any.
Total paid on childcare is higher in a family without a stay at home patent, though the two earner family generally will have more net disposable income (After child-care)
If you begin to optimize social and political decisions on the basis of having more tax payers, you'll get weird results. For a second example, cutting reproductive education funding in schools will lead to more tax payers (though arguably tax payers who pay less, so then the question becomes are you optimizing for tax payers or for future taxable income in total).
Do you have a citation for this? One with "cutting funding" in it and not the generic comparison between Somalia and Germany.
Your primary fallacy here is that you think you can always "mince the meat back". You usually can't. It doesn't work that way.
Actually, it is a correlation between educated women having educated partners that know how to use contraceptive methods. Educate all men and women's education will be less relevant. Or stop any education of men, contraceptive methods will decline and fertility grow.
> Is this, in the long run, also good for the taxpayers?
It all depends. Is it good for "taxpayers" that humanity does not go extinct? Is taxes the only moral compass for our society?
Each time someone mentions a social advance for our society there is a big reaction against it because "costs money". Yes, it costs money, and it is money well spend in the citizens well being.
Is the legal system, schools, the police force, firefighters, etc good for taxpayers? Yes.
Does it costs money? Yes.
And that is why there is taxes. To pay for our needs.
Quality is more important than quantity. More educated people will produce better product and improve everyone's lives. Not saying that denying 50% of population a chance to live their lives as they want is plainly wrong and immoral.
Not everyone wants to have kids and family. Some will work, some will stay at home. Same goes for men btw.
Child care is subsidised heavily by other taxpayers, but only government childcare - get a grandparent round and there's no tax break. The tax system works hard to discriminate against single parent families too (two people with two kids on total £80k pay a marginal tax of 32%. One person on £55k pays marginal 60%)
The observation is that they will cling to worse opportunities, delay having children or avoid having them entirely.
See e.g. France vs. Italy.
But the real issue is the women were artificially denied an opportunity to decide by themselves.
Also, once you're in, you'll have to pick the kid before 6pm in most daycares which means you must leave the office at 5pm and since a lot of companies do not have flex time, that single hour will push you to a part-time position. Then the daycare will refuse to take your child if they have a fever of 36.8℃ and do regular temperature checks during the day and force you to drop your work and come pick the child straight away if they go above 36.8℃.
Unless you work close to home and have a very flexible and comprehending employer (or have grand parents close by and ready to help), even with a lucky spot in daycare it is extremely complicated to continue working.
Let's not even talk about elementary school where mandatory partake in time-consuming useless PTA activities basically assumes one of the parent does not work.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/how-to-take... says:
> A normal temperature in babies and children is about 36.4C (97.5F)
The temperature elevation that is considered "abnormal" depends upon the age of the child and the site of measurement. The temperature elevation that may prompt clinical investigation for infection depends upon the age of the child and the clinical circumstances (eg, immune deficiency, sickle cell disease, ill-appearance, etc); in most scenarios, the height of the fever is less important than other signs of serious illness (eg, irritability, meningismus) [35-38].
●In the otherwise healthy neonate (0 to 28 to 30 days of age) and young infant (one to three months of age), fever of concern generally is defined by rectal temperature ≥38.0°C (100.4°F). (See "Febrile infant (younger than 90 days of age): Definition of fever", section on 'Definition of fever'.)
●In children 3 to 36 months, fever generally is defined by rectal temperatures ranging from ≥38.0 to 39.0°C (100.4 to 102.2°F) and fever of concern by rectal temperatures ≥39.0°C (102.2°F) if there is no focus of infection on examination. (See "Fever without a source in children 3 to 36 months of age", section on 'Fever of concern'.)
●In older children and adults, fever may be defined by oral temperatures ranging from ≥37.8 to 39.4°C (100.0 to 103.0°F) and fever of concern by oral temperatures ≥39.5°C (103.1°F).
Oral thermometers average one half of a degree Celsius lower than rectal.
The above is pretty much straight out of UTD, as I am far too lazy to retype it for anyone’s benefit.
OTOH I'd guess that low natality in Japan has other factors, as other comments pointed, even for men: long, long hours of work, living in a cage called "apartment", probably no leeway in the work to handle domestic problems (yes, even living under the most conservative marriage arrangement possible, there will be domestic emergencies all the time, where a man needs to step in).
Firstly, this is a small and modestly exclusive institution. So much so that it could hardly be a causal factor in motivating women to decline to have children in preference to their career. Simply declining to let qualified women be doctors to make room for privileged rich sons is a repugnant insult to human intelligence, and should be viewed as the sexist attitude it is.
Secondly, if the "force women to stay at home by disadvantaging them in the workplace" were such a great strategy, Japan wouldn't have a declining birthrate because until very recently (and ongoing, to a marginally lesser degree) this is the case.